


Under Control

by servantofclio



Series: Julian Shepard [5]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Pre-Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 02:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10526790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: Tali had an old crush? Shepard has a new crush, and tries to figure out what to do with it.





	

Out of nowhere, Kasumi said one day, “You and Tali must go way back.”

Shepard looked down at her, sitting cross-legged on her couch. “Not that far back,” he said, and then had to check himself.

He still felt like only a few months had passed since he’d been working with Tali down in the cramped crew deck of the old _Normandy_. If he didn’t remind himself, he still had trouble remembering that everyone else had gone on without him. He’d be talking, or thinking about something else, and then he’d look up and be startled again by the heavier armor Garrus wore these days, or by the gold detailing now adorning Tali’s environmental suit. With the two of them, when they were talking or working or fighting together, it was so easy to fall into their old rhythms that he’d forget the passage of time until a detail like that tripped him up. Easiest with Tali, somehow; maybe because of the hours they’d spent tinkering together, to the point where they hardly needed to talk at all, maybe just because it was Tali.

“Long enough,” Kasumi said, sounding amused.

Kasumi sounded amused more often than not. Shepard shouldn’t read to much into it. “Yeah, I guess so.” He wasn’t sure why she was bringing it up now. He was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned Tali himself.

“It just seemed like you’ve been especially glad to have her aboard.”

Shepard took that in, thinking back over the past couple of weeks. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but he supposed he _was_ glad to have Tali on the crew. Someone he could rely on and trust implicitly, someone he knew would check him if he needed it. They’d worked together so much in the past that he could anticipate her reactions, as often as not. With Tali added to Garrus, Joker, and Dr. Chakwas, he felt like no one could blindside him. Everything just seemed a little easier with Tali aboard. He shrugged. “It’s good to know the ship is in good hands.”

“I’ll bet,” Kasumi said.

“And Tali’s a good friend. It’s always good to have someone around you know you can trust.”

Kasumi gasped. “Shep. Are you saying the rest of us aren’t trustworthy?”

“Within certain parameters, sure.” He trusted any of them to watch his back in a fight — mostly. All the team members were committed to the mission, to one degree or another. He could trust them to do their jobs. But Garrus and Tali were _friends_. Them, he could trust to keep him honest. They’d know if Cerberus was getting into his head.

Kasumi chuckled. “Meaning you wouldn’t trust me with the family treasures.”

Shepard snorted. “My family doesn’t have any treasures to speak of.”

“So few do,” Kasumi said. “You and Tali would make a cute couple, you know.”

Shepard stopped short. “Excuse me?”

Kasumi laughed. “Oh, you know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.” 

“Sure, just think about it. The daring commander and the clever engineer, working together to save the galaxy, finding their common interests more important than their different species. Becoming friends, maybe something more…”

“I, uh.” Shepard shook his head. It sounded like something from a vid or a novel. Did everyone see them that way? Him and Tali. A couple.  Her words felt like an equation that wouldn’t add up. “You have quite the imagination, Kasumi.”

“Thanks,” she said cheerfully. “I’m serious, though. You really never thought about it?”

“I…” He hadn’t. Now that Kasumi’s words were out there, Shepard wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t.

Before… well, before there had been Ash. He still felt a certain guilty regret about how that had ended, and how far apart they’d become. But even when he and Ash had been getting involved, he’d always enjoyed Tali’s company. They’d always seemed to get each other, right from the start — or at least, once Tali got over being so nervous about joining the crew.

That was part of it, of course. She’d seemed so young and unsure of herself. Not just seemed; she’d _been_ young by the standards of her people or his. Smart as blazes, of course, sharp and inventive and quick to learn, and once she got comfortable as part of the crew, she’d opened up and showed off just how capable, generous, and quick-witted she really was.

Shepard thought he’d treated her like an equal back then, but maybe on some level he’d always thought of her as much younger, and acted accordingly.

She didn’t seem so young any more. He’d lost two years, and she’d caught up: the years she’d served her Fleet had seasoned her, given her experience. She carried herself with more confidence, even though she had the same wit and caring.

Kasumi was still waiting for an answer, watching him curiously. “I guess I never really did,” Shepard said finally.

“Huh. You might be missing out, you know.”

“I think we’re fine, Kasumi,” he said firmly, even though privately he wondered if she might be right.

She laughed and waved, picking up her book. “See you later, Shep.”

He escaped with relief, the door to the lounge sliding shut behind him.

That should have been the end of it.

#

But instead, Kasumi’s nosy questions settled into Shepard’s head like one of those catchy songs you could never quite shake. Over the next few days, the idea she’d planted popped up at the most inopportune moments. Shepard would be talking with Tali, perfectly normally, and then something about her would catch his attention. Her bright laughter, maybe, or how she fiddled with the edge of her hood as if it were a lock of hair, or the way she leaned back against her console with her hip cocked out. Whatever it was, he’d find himself distracted for a moment, temporarily forgetting whatever they were talking about, and he could almost hear with Kasumi’s _you really never thought about it?_ looping in the back of his mind.

Well, he was thinking about it now.

Sitting up late with Tali while working on their combat drones turned into trading increasingly punchy and obscure technical jokes, until Tali was laughing so hard she got hiccups, he thought about how comfortable and easy it was to spend time together. Tali had made it her mission to share all of her favorite music and vids from the last two years with him, and every time a notification popped up on his omni-tool with another song to check out, he felt a little warm burst of fondness.

Shepard had never really thought about Tali, or quarians in general, physically — he knew perfectly well that Tali was shaped generally like a human woman, except for the obvious differences in number of digits and how her limbs were jointed — but that was about the extent of his thoughts on the subject. He’d certainly never speculated about what quarians looked like without the suits. When he’d caught the old _Normandy_ crew speculating on the subject, he’d put a damper on it. It seemed rude, even prurient, and it wasn’t like the extranet couldn’t fill you in if you really wanted to know. Shepard had never done that, either. Tali was Tali, and it didn’t matter what she looked like.

But now, Shepard did find himself wondering, just a little.

Two days after his convrsation with Kasumi, they’d docked at Illium to deal with assorted business, and ran into Conrad Verner, of all the unexpected people. Once Shepard had gotten done trying to persuade Conrad out of doing something well-intentioned but ill-advised, he looked around for the teammates who’d accompanied him. He spotted Garrus immediately, since a nearly seven-foot turian in battered heavy armor stood out anywhere, let alone among Illium’s smooth wheelers and dealers, but Tali was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did Tali get to?” Shepard asked Garrus as he sauntered over.

Garrus tipped his head toward the dance floor. “At least she’s having fun,” he said mildly.

Shepard looked over, and sure enough, there was Tali among the dancers, head bobbing and doing something decidedly slinky with her arms. “What…” he said, trailing off in bafflement. _What_ Tali was doing was obvious, what he couldn’t figure out was why.

“I think she chatted up that matriarch over at the bar while you were talking to Conrad,” Garrus offered. “And maybe had a drink or two.”

“That fast?”

“You were talking to that guy for twenty minutes, Shepard.”

Shepard sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You’re exaggerating. But I guess I’ll have to go get her.”

There were a couple of other quarian women dancing as well, he noticed. Not as gracefully as Tali, though.

He might just possibly be biased.

“Tali,” he said, approaching her from behind. He had to raise his voice a little. “Tali!”

Tali jumped and spun around, only barely missing a beat. “Shepard!” she sang out brightly. “There you are! Come on and dance!”

Shepard raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? You know I’m not much of a dancer.” It wasn’t that he had no sense of rhythm, in spite of what some of the crew might claim. He could find the beat, all right, but he never had any idea what to do with his arms. Plus, just now he was wearing armor, which wasn’t exactly conducive to this kind of movement.

Tali laughed, her own arms curving through the air in winding patterns. “Just this once?”

“You’re just going to tease me later,” Shepard told her.

“Probably,” she said, laughing again.

“Fine,” Shepard said with a sigh, and contrived to move his feet to the beat. With the pounding percussion, it wasn’t hard to pick up.

But Tali — Tali was so transfixing that he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing at all. Where most of the dancers tended to just bounce up and down, Tali undulated, hips and arms circling, every movement fluid and confident. Shepard caught himself staring at the flex of her muscles, the way her body, suit and all, stretched and shifted. She seemed to be humming or singing under her breath.

It wouldn’t take much effort at all to reach out, put his hands on the curve of her waist and hips, maybe pull her in closer…

But he didn’t. The song ended, and Shepard shook himself out of that stupor. “We should… go,” he said. “Do that thing Liara needed.”

Tali sighed noisily. “Okay, let’s go.”

Garrus made some crack about Shepard’s dancing as the three of them exited the club. Shepard barely heard him. He was too busy trying to suppress the image of how graceful Tali had been, and how incredibly sexy that was.

Naturally, instead the impression got firmly lodged next to _you_ _’d make a cute couple_ in the back of his mind.

After that, it was even harder to avoid staring, and Shepard wasn’t sure he was managing it at all well. He watched the nimbleness of her long slim fingers at work, or the graceful sway of her hips as she moved around, and thought back to that moment on the dance floor.

It was embarrassing, frankly. Tali was his friend, his amazingly smart, sweet friend, who was sacrificing a lot to join his mission. It seemed like the very least Shepard could do was not crush on her so obviously that it made her uncomfortable.

In spite of his best efforts to squelch his imagination, he even got distracted on the battlefield, sometimes. They landed to check out a facility that turned out to be full of murderous mechs, because that was just the way their lives went these days, and in the thick of the firefight, Shepard ended up hunkered down behind some handy crates while he waited for his drone to reset.

Tali dropped into cover beside him, crouching down at an angle that would have made Shepard’s own hips scream in protest. “Hi,” she said breathlessly.

“Hi,” he replied. “At least it wasn’t a Cerberus fuck-up this time?”

Tali snorted. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

The report of sniper rifle sounded from Garrus’s perch above the factory floor. His voice sounded over the comm. “Don’t mind me up here all by myself. I can hold them off. You two just keep on chatting.”

“Oh, good, then the two of us can take a break,” Tali shot back.

“I’m going to have bragging rights, then.”

“We’re on it,” Shepard replied, firing off a combat drone with a slightly tweaked program. The drone’s holographic sphere popped up at the edge of Shepard’s makeshift barricade and drifted off toward the advancing mechs.

“I think I might be able to hack a couple,” Tali said, activating her omni-tool.

“Do it, that’ll help take the heat off.”

Tali nodded, bending over her work, and Shepard counted the seconds before she said, “Got it, here goes nothing.”

“I’ll cover you.”

They rose simultaneously, Shepard laying down a stream of covering fire while Tali launched her cyberattack. Two of the mechs twitched and then turned on their comrades. At the same time, Tali vaulted over the barricade, darting to the next piece of cover: a dark, graceful curving shape that had Shepard staring after her a second too long. His shields sparked and died, forcing him to drop back into cover as shots pinged off his armor.

_Keep your head in the game_ , he reminded himself, irritated with his own blunder. He’d half-expected Garrus to make a smartass comment on Shepard’s mistake, nothing happened; Garrus must have been looking somewhere else at the time.

Still, Shepard was thoroughly annoyed with himself. Sometimes you found a teammate attractive, fine, but getting that distracted during a firefight was just sloppy and unprofessional. The whole thing was unprofessional. Yeah, he’d crossed the line before, with Ash, and in general he’d gotten a lot closer to his subordinates as friends than might be ideal for a commanding officer, but this was something else again. Something he needed to get a handle on, and fast.

How, exactly, to get a handle on it was something Shepard still hadn’t figured out, by the time he made his daily pass through Engineering to check in.

He’d only just passed through the doors when he heard Ken Donnelly in the middle of running his mouth about how Tali’s suit was “snug in all the right places.”

Shepard nearly snarled at Ken on the spot to watch his mouth and show some respect to a superior. His fists clenched.

Before Shepard could do or say anything, though, Tali replied tartly, “I can hear you, you know.”

Gabby laughed and Ken groaned, ducking his head.

Shepard’s furious urge died, followed by a wash of guilt. Shepard might not have said anything, but hadn’t he been thinking close enough to the same thing?

Anyway, Tali had the situation under control. Shepard cleared his throat and stepped forward, both of the humans straightening up as they became aware of his presence.

He did take up the issue of insubordination with Tali afterward, privately.

“I heard what Ken said earlier.”

Tali made a disgusted noise in her throat. “Oh, Ken. Don’t worry about him.”

Shepard watched her carefully, trying to make sure she wasn’t upset. “If he’s causing a problem —”

Tali held up a hand. “Please. I can handle Ken Donnelly. He’ll behave himself. Mostly, anyway.”

“Okay,” Shepard said, relaxing a little. “Just because we’re not a military ship doesn’t mean there’s any excuse to speak about a crewmate like that. Especially a supervisor.”

She shook her head. “I’ve talked with him. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Good,” Shepard said, relieved.

“It was strange, though, it almost reminded me of being on the flotilla,” Tali said matter-of-factly.

Shepard frowned. “Really? Quarians usually make suggestive remarks about their coworkers?”

“Oh, no, I mean, not exactly. Not like that, anyway.” Tali put a hand to her head. “Certainly not when you’re on duty. It’s more, you know, you all live together, you work together, if people are looking to socialize or, um… get more involved, of course your crewmates are the ones you see most often.”

“Oh. Right.” Shepard felt foolish; of course quarian ships wouldn’t have the same kind of norms that Alliance military ships did. Their ships were their homes, and they couldn’t save it all for shore leave.

“So there are ways of… signaling that you’re interested. Although more carefully. And politely. Er. Anyway. A lot of that sort of thing happened when I first joined the _Neema_. I’m used to it, believe me.”

Shepard felt like he’d had a bucket of cold water dumped on him. Why had this never occurred to him before? Of course Tali had lots of people interested in her on her home ship. She was smart, brave, loyal, the daughter of one of her fleet’s highest ranking officers. She’d come home after distinguishing herself in service to the galaxy as well as her own people. Of course she’d have tons of people interested in her, even if she was hideous by quarian standards.

Although if he were put to it, Shepard would lay every credit he had on her not being hideous.

Abruptly, he wondered whether she’d returned any of that interest, back on the _Neema_.

Equally quickly, he wished he hadn’t had the thought. It wasn’t any of his business. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had girlfriends in the past. Hell, Tali and Ashley were friends, even.

Which was also irrelevant, along with whatever else he was feeling, because Tali was going home once this was done. She’d go back to her Fleet and her people, and go be beautifully brilliant and hard-working for them. Probably she’d become an admiral herself one day, and take up with some equally loyal and hard-working quarian. She’d always been very clear where her loyalties lay.

“Right. Of course,” he said belatedly.

Tali groaned. “Oh, this is awkward. How did we even start talking about this?”

“Ken,” Shepard said.

“That bosh’tet,” Tali grumbled. “Don’t worry, though. He knows his job, and like I said, I can handle him.”

Shepard cast about desperately for a change of subject, something that was not, “So, are you seeing anybody back in the Fleet, then?”

He ended up with: “So, that song you sent me yesterday. Does the band have anything else good?”

“Yes! Lots!” Tali started scrolling through her omni-tool. “Let me just send you their entire second album, it’s great. The first one’s a little mixed, but there are a few songs I really like—”

Shepard breathed a sigh of relief, and tried not to stare. He’d get himself, and his inconvenient feelings, under control.


End file.
